Chien-an Yuan is an evangelist.

Not the type who's selling you hope in exchange for a monthly tithe but the kind who just wants you to believe—in art and its healing powers; in music and its succor; in poetry and life-giving energy.

The Ann Arbor musician-photographer-curator works not just in words but in deeds—and sometimes, the deeds are words, carefully arranged and expertly recited as is the case with The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry.

The project is a collaboration between Yuan's 1473 record label, Michigan poets, and Fifth Avenue Studios, the recordings division of the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL). 

Named after two high school teachers who inspired Yuan, The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry is a collection of recited poems, documented at Fifth Avenue Studios, with covers created by local artists for each chapter in the series. (Shannon Rae Daniels' watercolors will adorn the first 10 sessions.) All the recordings can be listened to and downloaded free of charge whether or not you have a library card.

The anthology's construction is ongoing—you can listen to Ann Arbor poets Kyunghee Kim and Zilka Joseph so far—but there's an official launch for the project on Monday, December 9, at 6 pm at AADL's Downtown location. Kim will be joined by upcoming Coolidge-Wagner writers Sherina Rodriguez Sharpe, Chace Morris, and Emily Nick Howard, along with Yuan introducing the poets and talking about the project. (Joseph will be at a future Coolidge-Wagner event.)

I sent Yuan some queries about The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry, and his answers were so passionate, revealing, and thorough that they stand alone without my framing questions.

Below is Yuan's testament to the power of art and a brief history of The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry:

I really struggled to connect with poetry in high school—yes, I could analyze a stanza to death and b.s. like the best of them of what I thought it all meant, but I just never connected with it. Late junior year, I bought some poetry records—Dylan Thomas being one of them—and it all immediately clicked. It was the Thomas record that did it, really—it was the realization that voice, accent, and reading provide so much additional context for experiencing poetry. It's like all art forms—you can listen and watch anything but art only truly comes alive when it's something you experience with all your senses activated. When I listen to poetry while I read it, it all just clicks.

During the pandemic, I decided to finally organize my record collection, for real, and it occurred to me that it was a shame that nobody mass produces poetry records anymore—sure, there are niche pressings here and there—but somewhere along the way, poetry had become disconnected from the pop culture discourse and is now seemingly thought of as "high-brow" or whatever, which is just silly, really. Of course, the component that really kicked everything into place was the realization at one point that Ann Arbor and Metro Detroit are an amazing place for poetry and I'm lucky enough to know more than a few of them. So, anything I can do to showcase this bounty of talent—it's my honor to do so!

When I found out about the new recording facilities at Fifth Avenue Studios at AADL Downtown, I realized that it'd be a perfect way to not only try and bring the idea of recorded poetry back into the public consciousness but also amplify the amazing service and resources that Fifth Avenue Studios provides. AADL is not a normal library and if anything, is Ann Arbor's unofficial Cultural Center.

Not only that, but something else I am passionate about is public art—not just in the sphere of art to be displayed in public but art created directly for the public to access. We live in a society that celebrates philistinism, and anything that I can do to advocate for fewer barriers by which people can access art, I'm all in. The older I get, I realize that art isn't just a lens by which we can process the world but the lens by which we can survive it. There is a limit to how much news and policy that anyone can ingest—it is so obviously the intent of some cultural bad actors out there to overwhelm the public with instability, with the ultimate goal of placating them with the most mediocre and intentionally dumb entertainment.

I refuse to partake in that. All of it. Believing in art as a saving grace has become the one thing I know to be true—that the best of it reveals something new about the human experience, ultimately pointing the way to increase empathy in our world. Is an anthology of recorded poetry a means to achieve that? I don't know but it's a start. I mean, if one person can have that same experience listening to one of these recordings as I did listening to that Dylan Thomas, it will all be worth it, you know?

I was a troubled kid in high school—no, it's more that I was a total dumbass in high school. Yes, it's been 30 years and I understand much of my behavior was some twisted form of survival mechanism being one of the only BIPOC kids in the whole school but that doesn't excuse anything I said or did and yes, I'm still plagued by feelings of embarrassment and shame about it all. The choices I made to feel less othered could be a textbook on what not to do. Having said that, I do understand that there's a level of grace I need to extend my past self and it's in large part due to Mr. Wagner and Ms. Coolidge. The idea of "being seen," right? When you're one of two or three Asian American kids in high school, it's further complicated by the fact that sometimes you don't want to be seen at all yet your appearance alone makes that inescapable. It's this continual, negotiated navigation rooted in conflicting emotions and hormones and it's messy, messy, messy.

When a teacher sees you, though—when they see past all of the posturing and fear—it's an amazing, life-changing thing. I used to write the most insufferable "edgy" crap in the school newspaper reviewing movies and music in some misguided attempt to—you know, I really can't get that much into it because I'm physically cringing right now as I write this. Long story short, a normal adult would be justified in shrugging me off as just another snarky jackass.

So, when my physics teacher, Mr. Wagner, started chatting with me one day about minimalism, it was completely destabilizing because he wasn't talking to me on the level of my strident and churlish writing, but in a thoughtful and direct way, trying to get me to articulate why I actually liked anything. Soon after, he hands me a CD of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and says, "I know you like Philip Glass, but I'd like you to take a listen to this in one sitting all the way through and tell me what you think." He didn't say it like a challenge or anything but more with a raised eyebrow of genuine curiosity of what I would think, so I was all in. I went back home that day and listened to the CD straight through and was mesmerized. I think even Mr. Wagner was surprised by how enthusiastic I was about it, and every chance I could get we'd chat about something art-related.

It was only years later that I realized so much of our time chatting was just him encouraging me to find the light in not just art but myself. I know that's corny to say but it's true. Every piece of music he recommended to me, every time he listened to me ranting about this or that, it was always from a place of care and belief. I'm sure for Mr. Wagner it wasn't anything really to bring that CD to give to me, but I cannot overstate how life-changing for me.  I found out just recently that he had passed away and it broke my heart that I never got a chance to thank him because that's the thing, right? He didn't have to do anything at all—yet he did. Such a small gesture but, my god, the impact.

With Ms. Coolidge, it's more about her modeling this whole holistic and open approach to the literary arts. Even more so, her push to get us to open up and see our own interpretation and analyses of literature as being just as valid as academic opinions was life-changing in its own right. It's funny, the paradox of being a teenager—you cannot think of yourself as not the center of the world, and yet you're terrified to express yourself genuinely out of fear of being exposed. So, it's so easy for teenagers to just point to "expert" opinions and parrot them. You see it everywhere now with the way that teen males have completely bought into the world of idiotic podcasts. It's a terrifying trend yet completely understandable.

When you get a teacher then who can get students to recognize that they have their own voice and that it's valid? Again, such a simple concept and again, life-changing. I still have my copy of the An Introduction to Poetry from her AP English class and just looking through it right now, I can see my fevered notes written in the margins about two of my still favorite poems: Anne Sexton's "Her Kind" and Philip Larkin's "Poetry of Departures." And one I haven't thought of in years, but just rereading it now—the power of it—Dudley Randall's "Ballad of Birmingham."

Also, and this is key, but Ms. Coolidge also saw no barriers between pop and high-brow art. She taught a class of sci-fi writing and would discuss the bubblegum pop culture stuff in class in the most serious way. Never dismissive, always open.

Even more so, with both Ms. Coolidge and Mr. Wagner, it instilled in me a belief that my art wasn't just something to believe in but something that was at its most thrilling when it can be shared and discussed—and most importantly, to understand that your opinions are something that are fluid and flexible. Music for 18 Musicians? It wasn't just the music itself that affected me but how I heard it—in one sitting, deeply concentrating on what was happening, yet remaining open to the adrenaline rush of hearing something new for the first time. It took me years to understand that he wasn't just saying this art is great but it's how you engage with it that is the key factor.

So yeah, the least I could do was to honor both of them. Educators have the toughest jobs and so much responsibility on their shoulders—how lucky was I to get two of the best?

Christopher Porter is a library technician and the editor of Pulp. 

The Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry live reading happens Monday, December 9, at 6 pm at the Ann Arbor District Library, 343 South Fifth Avenue. Visit aadl.org/coolidgewagner for the ongoing Coolidge-Wagner series.